The quarterly journal of The Wodehouse Society

Volume 27 Number 3 Autumn 2006

Aunts Aren’t What? BY CHARLES GOULD ecently, cataloguing a collection of Wodehouse novels in translation, I was struck again by R the strangeness of the title Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen and by the sad history that seems to dog this title and its illustrators, who in my experience always include a cat. Wodehouse’s original title is derived from the dialogue between and Bertie at the very end of the novel, in which Bertie’s idea that “the trouble with aunts as a class” is “that they are not gentlemen.” In context, this is very funny and certainly needs no explication. We are well accustomed to the “ungentlemanly” behavior of —autocratic, tyrannical, unreasoning, and unfair—though in this instance it’s the good and deserving whose “moral code is lax.” But exalted to the level of a title and thus isolated, the statement A sensible Teutonic “aunts aren’t gentlemen” provokes some scrutiny. translation First, it involves a terrible pun—or at least homonymic wordplay—lost immediately on such lost American souls as pronounce “aunt” “ant” and “aren’t” “arunt.” That “aunt” and “aren’t” are homonyms is something of a stretch in English anyway, and to stretch it into a translation is hopeless. True, in “The Aunt and the Sluggard” (), Wodehouse wants us to pronounce “aunt” “ant” so that the title will remind us of the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper; but “ants aren’t gentlemen” hasn’t a whisper of wit or euphony to recommend it to the ear. Nor, out of the context of that concluding dialogue, has it much appeal to the understanding, for it makes the wholly baseless (or fruitless, or bootless) assumption that even American readers will not take “gentlemen” literally. Even then, even in English in England, the title makes but little sense. You have to read through to the last line of the novel to get it entirely. Illiterate in every language cited here if not in my own, I can’t imagine what it means in Danish or Norwegian (Tanter er ikke gentlemen) or Dutch (Tantes zijn geen heren)—unless, as I have elsewhere suggested, it hints at one of those sex-change operations which it shall ever be my study not to know about or deserve. Like the Italian (Le zie non sono gentiluomini ) and the Swedish (Fastrar är inga gentlemän), these literal translations must be mystifying in a culture where “gentleman” does not have the immediate, automatic metaphorical connotation of “straight shooter” or “one who plays cricket.” Why—how—would an aunt be a gentleman? The question reminds me of Gussie Fink- Nottle and Catsmeat Pirbright in their Pat and knockabout cross-talk act in Chapter 22 of The Mating Season: “Who was that lady I saw you with?” “That was no lady, that was my wife.” Similarly, in Bertie’s words, “an amusing little misunderstanding, you would say,” thinking that an aunt was a gentleman. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Teutonic translator—Christian Thiermann—avoids all this “incoherent raving,” as Gussie would call it, by the simple expedient of not attempting to translate the title at all. The German title—Fünf vor zwölf, Jeeves! (Five before Twelve, Jeeves!)—is perhaps as Lancaster came in at his worst . . . which is not bad; sensible as the others, since it, too, doesn’t mean a thing but Jeeves wouldn’t have let Bertie leave even a cottage . . . unless you notice, on the front-cover illustration in that green checked tweed suit, green (green?) hat, of the German first edition, the time on the stable and orange shoes! Then Simon & Schuster brought clock (11:55), which marks Bertie’s encounter with in Norman Greene to produce probably the worst Pop Cook at Eggesford Court, while he is expected for Wodehouse dust-wrapper illustration in history: Bertie lunch with the Briscoes at Eggesford Hall, though the Wooster looks like a middle-aged Kennebunkport Briscoe binge is actually slated for 1:30. This illustration Realtor (or retired Schoolmaster) awaiting his third is clearly derived from Osbert Lancaster’s dust wrapper martini—which in fact Jeeves has in his hand, not on for the Barrie & Jenkins edition (used also on the a tray, looking like Alistair Cooke after a bad date with Danish edition), in which the time on the stable clock Tallulah Bankhead. Not a pretty sight. But behind it all is 5 minutes past 12; but I think we will all agree that is a cat. Fünf nach zwölf hasn’t nearly the dramatic suspense David Jasen once told me that Wodehouse routinely of the present title, while Eggesford Mittags would be threw dust wrappers away when he received copies of the merest shilly-shallying. (Chapter Nine begins at his books. Sad news for some collectors, but in this case 5 minutes to 3—fünf Minuten vor drei—but that is who’d blame him? Some of the paperback covers I’ve completely irrelevant to this discussion.) My point is mentioned would have—may have, if he saw them— that by this Teutonic titular criterion, Melville might as puzzled him as much as they do me. I used to tell my well have entitled his masterwork Eight Bells, while we classes that if they couldn’t judge a book by its cover would know The Sun Also Rises as About 6 A.M., E.S.T. they’d waste a lot of time on a physics text that could I believe there is a work entitled High Noon, but—for have been a Dickens novel. James Thurber (“What’s obvious reasons—I don’t know what it’s about. Just So Funny?” in Thurber Country, New York: Simon & imagine the bibliography if Herr Thiermann were to Schuster, 1962) offered as his first standing rule about re-entitle Wodehouse’s entire output after this fashion! humor: “The reader should be able to find out what the There’d hardly be enough hours in the day. story is about.” I feel this rule should apply to titleists, American translator Peter Schwed similarly avoided translators, and cover illustrators. When Agatha Christie the difficulties attendant upon the literal by changing offers us 4:50 from Paddington, we know where we are the title to The Cat-nappers, making another—if and when, and—from Dame Agatha—we know what possible, worse—pun too tedious to explain . . . though to expect. Five to Twelve at Eggesford Court doesn’t do it admittedly, Bertie is sleepy at the beginning of Chapter for Sir Pelham. Six, and the plot turns on Aunt Dahlia’s assigning him the task of kidnapping the cat on whom the well- © Charles E. Gould, Jr. 2006 being of the race horse she has bet against depends. (Somewhere in this little zoo there should be a kid- goat.) Peter Schwed was a revered friend, but some of his PGW titles are embarrassing. Just think where we’d be if the Danish and the Deutsch and the Dutch had started with this one. We’d have Katzendämmerung, or Das Schläfchen um zwölf Uhr, and then it would come back into English as The Late-night Litter Lifters. I do not have in hand all of the titles I’ve mentioned, relying on Ms. McIlvaine for the Italian and Swedish, and I mention only the artwork I have actually seen Tour of Wodehouse’s England for this title, sparing us all what I would heretically say about the Ionicus illustration if it were here. Trying to ord has just been received that the P G illustrate (as often is true) the title without reading the WWodehouse Society (UK) has set dates— novel, these artists agree there’s a cat in it. The Dutch specifically, July 8–15, 2007—for its next Tour of first edition—preceding, alas, the advent of Peter van Wodehouse’s England to celebrate the Society’s 10th Straaten—presents a sole photographic image of Jeeves anniversary. Full details of the tour and its costs will with an umbrella on his left arm and a cat on a leash be published in the winter issue of Plum Lines. Until in his right hand: as an illustration of anything in the that time, if you may be interested in signing up book it’s as baffling as the title. In England, Osbert for it, email the Society’s chairman, Hilary Bruce. 2 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 Providence Convention 2007! Notice for Visitors to re you moaning that it’s been far too long since A we last had a convention? Do you get an itchy, Dulwich College can’t-wait sensation whenever thoughts of stimulating talks, scintillating skits, and sensational browsing and lease raise your glasses in sluicing come to mind? Alas, immediate relief is not Pa toast to Dr. Jan Piggott, in store, because the next who recently retired as convention is still more than Dulwich College’s archivist. a year away. It’s not too soon, We Wodehousians have always though, to start planning been fortunate in having an now for what promises to able and dedicated individual be a heavenly time (that’s a administering the Wodehouse clue) in Providence, Rhode papers at the archive, and we all Island. So if you haven’t appreciate the wonderful job Jan did during his years already done so, get out your in the post. The Wodehouse collection will now be calendar and reserve the date: overseen by Mrs. Calista Lucy. October 11–14, 2007, at the With this changing of the guard, it is worthwhile Providence Biltmore Hotel (www.providencebiltmore. to remind Wodehousians of the protocol for visiting com). Details and registration forms will be provided Dulwich College. For those who wish only to see in the next issue of Plum Lines and all issues thereafter the Wodehouse Study in the library, you may view it until it’s time to convene once again with our fellow without appointment, Monday–Friday, at any time Plummies, known far and wide for their divine natures. during the school’s regular terms. All you need to do is (That’s another clue.) report to Reception for a visitor’s pass. However, if you plan to visit the college out of term time, please write to: Julia Field, Enterprise Manager, Dulwich College, London SE21 7LD. In your letter, specify the date and time of your proposed visit, along with alternatives (if possible), and be sure to state your desire to see the Wodehouse Study. Mrs. Field is also the person to contact for tours of the college itself as well as group Convention 2009 Bids visits. Wodehouse students and scholars who wish to view reminder: All chapters who may be interested in or study the manuscripts and letters in the Wodehouse A hosting the 2009 convention must submit their archive may write directly to Mrs. Calista Lucy, Keeper bids to Elin Woodger, chairperson of The Wodehouse of the Archives, Wodehouse Library, Dulwich College, Society Convention Steering Committee (TWS CSC), London SE21 7LD; or email her at archives@dulwich. by January 11, 2007, at the latest. Bidding chapters will org.uk. For additional information on Dulwich College, be notified by April 11, 2007, whether their application including its academic term dates and how to get there, has been successful or not. The criteria for bids are set visit their website at www.dulwich.org.uk. (Clicking on out in the TWS CSC charter, which can be obtained “Events” will lead you to “Exhibitions,” which includes from the Society’s website (http://www.wodehouse. information about the Wodehouse Study.) org/twsCSCcharter), or by writing to Elin. Spotted on the Internet n a recent review of the book Manliness by She sniffed bitterly. “Why, you can’t be too stout for I Harvey C. Mansfield, the reviewer, Matthew Number Two towns. The thing isn’t possible. They Rarey, made this cogent observation: “But silence is like their heroines stout. It makes them feel they’ve preferable to explaining what makes humour work, had their money’s worth.” which is why critics have shied away from giving “The Code of the Mulliners” (1935) P. G. Wodehouse his due as a gifted humourist. Try explaining Gussie Fink-Nottle and you get the picture.” Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 3 Plum in Hollywood: Just the FAQs, and a Few Myths Shattered BY BRIAN TAVES

Brian presented this paper at last year’s “Hooray for Hollywood!” In August 1929 it was Wodehouse himself who convention in Los Angeles. To the delight of Wodehousians came knocking on Hollywood’s door. In the wake everywhere, he has recently published P. G. Wodehouse and of his first visit, he wrote “Slaves of Hollywood” for Hollywood: Screenwriting, Satires and Adaptations—see the Saturday Evening Post, about its lure for writers. page 7 for details. Yet, succumbing to this very lure himself, he then authorized his wife to negotiate a screenwriting n June 1931, finishing a year in Hollywood as contract for him, and the deal she arranged with MGM I a scriptwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, P. G. called for Wodehouse to be paid $2,000 a week. Even Wodehouse told a newspaperwoman the words that stepdaughter Leonora was given a job at the studio. have since defined this time in his life. Wodehouse was 49 when he arrived in town to begin work on May 8, 1930. The studio allowed him “I cannot see what they engaged me for to write largely at home. He was assigned to create a . . . . They were extremely nice to me—oh, story for Jack Buchanan, then asked to rewrite Those extremely—but I feel as if I have cheated Three French Girls, with a script ready by July 8; the them. studio hoped to distinguish it by the Wodehouse flavor. “You see, I understood I was engaged to write Reginald Denny starred as a not-too-bright Englishman stories for the screen. . . . who comes to the rescue of three women, falling in love “Yet apparently they had the greatest difficulty with one of them despite his scheming but buffoonish in finding anything for me to do. Twice during uncle, an earl. the year they brought completed scenarios of Wodehouse had hoped to write an original other people’s stories to me and asked me to do screenplay for Marion Davies, but instead he became a some dialogue. . . . That about sums up what I collaborator on a project to star her, the musical , was called upon to do for my $104,000.” already two years in the making. Wodehouse had been involved with the stage version. By August 1930 he The first inkling Wodehouse had of the impact of had contributed to the script, and in October he was his remarks came with a call from Reuters early the next commissioned to write Rosalie as a novelette. Then, after morning, asking if the interview was authentic. When six months, Rosalie was cancelled, as musicals seemed another call was received shortly afterward, Wodehouse to be in decline. finally went out to get the morning paper and saw that MGM credited Wodehouse, along with Sarah Y. the interview had merited a headline. The next day Mason, as author of additional dialogue on a movie the New York Herald Tribune used it as the basis for an adapted by Mason from the previous year’s H. M. editorial on practices in Hollywood. Variety mentioned Harwood play, The Man in Possession. Wodehouse made an English playwright and author making $2,500 a week clear his feelings about this credit. In “George and “without contributing anything really worthwhile to the Alfred” the narrator remarks that “The lot of a writer screen.” In the weeks to come, and indeed throughout of additional dialogue in a Hollywood studio is not an the 1930s, the press never missed an opportunity to exalted one—he ranks, I believe, just above a script girl remind readers of Wodehouse’s words. And, worse, and just below the man who works the wind machine.” Wodehouse biographers accepted what he had said. In October 1930 Wodehouse was asked to write In truth, Wodehouse wildly exaggerated. He tried dialogue for the screen adaptation of the play Among to correct matters at the time with a letter to the Los the Married. Part of the reason for this assignment may Angeles Times, asserting credit for the dialogue in a have been his humorous golf stories, for in Among the number of films, but for many years that letter was Married the rakish hero is a golf champion. Wodehouse overlooked. In fact, Wodehouse had indeed been very was not credited on the final film, retitled Men Call busy in Hollywood and successful by the standards of It Love, which became entirely dramatic. Similarly, screenwriting, especially in the studio era. Wodehouse contributed to another play adaptation, 4 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 retitled The Passionate Plumber (with a separate French version also produced). In 1935, 20th Century-Fox bought the film rights to Thank You, Jeeves in a deal that allowed the studio to make additional films centered around Jeeves for up to 20 years. Fox’s series was launched on what was perceived as a sure bet, casting Arthur Treacher, known for butler roles, in the title role. However, Thank You, Jeeves dispensed with the plot of the novel, and any other Jeeves story, in an incredibly unlikely tale of espionage. On screen, Jeeves is irritable and petulant, and Wodehouse himself said that Treacher “pulled faces all the time. Awful.” David Niven made an acceptable Bertie, but in marrying him at the end of Thank You, Jeeves, half of the Wodehouse team was eliminated, judging Bertie to be dispensable. The second of the Brian Taves presenting The FAQs in L.A. series, Step Lively, Jeeves, does contain a few mild, brief laughs, but it was still far from the necessary quality to Just a Gigolo, again without credit. sustain a series, which ended after the two films. At the end of 1930, MGM bought Candle-Light, In 1934 Paramount inquired unsuccessfully about which included paying Wodehouse £500 for his engaging Wodehouse as a screenwriter at $1,500 a share of the rights to his own 1929 adaptation of the week, and in 1936 the studio brought to Siegfried Geyer play. The title ofCandle-Light comes the screen. The same year, MGM released a new version from an old maxim: “Choose neither women nor linen of , and The Man in Possession was remade by candle-light.” It is very frankly continental in its with the title Personal Property. outlook, concerning several attempts by Josef, a valet, at In the wake of the Jeeves films and Piccadilly seduction. The screen version was to star John Gilbert, Jim, Hollywood seemed more amenable to filming but the studio wanted to end the actor’s contract. Wodehouse stories, despite the varied results. Was it Wodehouse recalled: “So they decide his next picture time to try again? When Wodehouse’s tax problems were will be such a flop that he will make a settlement. And resolved, and despite his earlier vows never to return the disturbing thought that occurs to me is that when to Hollywood and his series of satirical short stories it is essential that a picture shall lay an egg, does the cry and novels about the industry, he engaged his agent to go around the studio ‘Wodehouse is the man. Send for arrange his return to the ranks of screenwriters. Wodehouse.’” MGM decided not to film Candle-Light By October 1936 Wodehouse was back at MGM but, two years later, sold the rights, and all their scripts, at $2,500 a week for six months. Again he was assigned to Universal, who filmed it in 1933 as By Candlelight. to Rosalie, and although this time the movie was made, The head of MGM told Wodehouse that Leave It the producer elbowed Wodehouse aside. Yet he didn’t to was a favorite novel, but he was unwilling leave town. to film it. MGM wanted Wodehouse the playwright, Wodehouse rejected several writing offers, not the novelist. Hollywood was only in its third including a Hollywood satire that was about to begin year of making sound films, and the industry sought production. I even discovered, many years ago during screenwriters with stage experience. Adaptations of my graduate years at USC, a Warner Bros. memo plays had dominated Hollywood’s films of Wodehouse suggesting Wodehouse as a dialogue writer for the on the silent screen since 1920, typified by MGM’s upcoming Errol Flynn swashbuckler, Adventures of one previous Wodehouse film, The Cardboard Lover, a Robin Hood. 1928 silent with Marion Davies. Even the one novel RKO had bought the rights to both the novel and that MGM did buy (but never produced) was If I Were the Wodehouse–Ian Hay stage versions of A Damsel You—which Wodehouse had written, from a play in Distress, since the studio needed a Fred Astaire coauthored with , during spare time on the vehicle. In May 1937 Wodehouse was hired to adapt MGM payroll. Within months of his leaving MGM, his novel, and he finished on August 14, having made production began on a sound remake of Her Cardboard $14,500. He then went to work at Warner Bros. but Lover. Buster Keaton played the lead in what was left unhappily after six weeks, receiving $10,000. Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 5 A Damsel in Distress proved to be the first Astaire movie to lose money at the box office. Wodehouse may PGW on Campus also have been glad to leave Hollywood because of a letter from Philip Dunne. Dunne was an acknowledged leftist and a chief organizer of the Screen Writers Guild. In response, the producers recognized a competing union, the Screen Playwrights, of which Wodehouse was a member. Dunne wrote Wodehouse saying he was consorting with scabs, and the letter was published in Amy Plofker recently sent a couple of interesting Variety. The Screen Playwrights announced they were college course descriptions, commenting that “I know suing Dunne, and the Guild, for libel. The suit was we Plummies deplore how little PGW is taught in quickly dismissed, but Dunne, who became a producer college courses.” I have to note that I don’t deplore this and director, would accuse Wodehouse of “right- state of affairs. I think Shaw once said he did not want wing leanings” and, later, anti-Semitism, based on the to be taught in schools and become hated in the way German broadcasts. Shakespeare is hated. He had a point. All the same, In 1942 MGM remade Her Cardboard Lover, it’s good to see Wodehouse is not being overlooked this time starring Norma Shearer. The first American entirely. –Ed. Wodehouse television broadcast was in 1950: Uncle Dynamite, perhaps inevitably starring Arthur Treacher. From the Connecticut College 2006–07 catalog, under During the 1950s his former partner in Thank You, the heading “English 320: Special Topics in 20th Century Jeeves, David Niven, proved to be an ideal Fiction”: in two television versions of “Uncle Fred Flits By.” English 320B Modernism and Its Discontents Candle-Light appeared on the small screen three times, A comparison of representative works of 20th-century and there were two new television versions of Anything “modernist” fiction with more traditional works from Goes, as well as a movie. One of Wodehouse’s plays, the same period. Authors to be studied may include Arthur, never staged before then, instead appeared on Joyce, Ford, Woolf, Wodehouse, Waugh and Nabokov. television as a 1960 segment of the hour-long anthology series Ford Startime. Also, Texas Christian University offers this delightfully And there the story ends. Forty-five years have named class in its 2006–07 catalog as part of the Master passed since Hollywood last brought Wodehouse of Liberal Arts program: to its screen; only British productions show in the MALA 61043: Jerks, Nitwits, and Losers: The Anti- United States. Despite his satirical stories of the city Hero in Western Tradition. and his disappointments, Wodehouse had repeatedly This class explores the changing ideas of what makes undertaken screenwriting, although fully cognizant of someone a jerk, nitwit, or loser from antiquity to its perils. He had the rare privilege of adapting one of the 20th century. How and why have these ideas his own novels to the screen. Now we can celebrate changed? What cultural values—about individuality, Wodehouse’s achievements in Hollywood as a writer about equality, about sympathy—do these ideas who overcame the frustrations of studio employment reveal? What are the social and political functions to make Hollywood a notable part of his career. of labeling someone a jerk, nitwit, or loser? Under what conditions are these anti-heroes admirable, even Poets and other literary blokes talk a lot about falling heroic? Readings will possibly include: Homer’s The in love at first sight, but it’s equally possible to fall Iliad (selections), Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus, Chaucer’s out of love just as quickly. One moment, this girl Canterbury Tales (selections), Shakespeare’s Twelfth was the be-all and end-all, as you might say, of Percy Night, Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, Melville’s Bartleby Wimbolt’s life. The next, she was just a regrettable the Scrivener, Wodehouse’s The Mating Game, and young blister with whom he wished to hold no Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. further communication. He could stand a good deal from the sex. Insults directed at himself left him Cats who know me well, like Aunt Dahlia’s Augustus, unmoved. But he was not prepared to countenance will probably allude to my skill at scratching them destructive criticism of a Bodmin hat. behind the ear. “The Amazing Hat Mystery” (1933) Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974)

6 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 Important New Book News P. G. Wodehouse and Hollywood: Screenwriting, Satires 1930s, Wodehouse spent two sojourns in Hollywood as and Adaptations a scriptwriter, which in turn led to a dozen novels, short By Brian Taves stories, and autobiographical memoirs concentrating on • Foreword by (renowned for his Hollywood settings or characters. His satire revealed an portrayals of Wodehouse characters in movies, understanding of the actual structure of the filmmaking television, and radio, from industry, and his alternate Hollywood is the equal of to Uncle Fred to ) any portrait, comedic or dramatic. • Published by McFarland & Company, Inc. (June “Television, from single programs to series, found 2006) new ways to adapt his work. Almost as important are • Paperback, 216pp, illustrated his radio plays, which often allowed both his dialogue • List Price: $35 and narration to be spoken in their original form. • Available from McFarland, Amazon, and Barnes & Moreover, it was with radio that Wodehouse made the Noble (see below) greatest mistake of his career, making broadcasts from Germany upon his release from civilian internment. e Plummies have a lot to be grateful for, thanks “This study seeks to bring together these diverse Wto the continuing publication of new books on strands. Wodehouse exercised much reticence about P. G. Wodehouse. The latest to reach our bookshelves his own work for the screen, a habit unfortunately is the long-awaited work by Brian Taves, Ph.D., on followed by his biographers later, and therefore the full Wodehouse’s years in Hollywood. A graduate of the extent of his activities in Hollywood has not been fully University of Southern California, film archivist for appreciated. Included in the book is a comprehensive, the Library of Congress, and longtime member of detailed list of Wodehouse’s stories and articles about The Wodehouse Society, Brian is the author of six Hollywood, as well as a complete filmography of motion books and over 100 articles on popular culture and pictures and television works to which he contributed the media. Last year he gave us a brief sneak preview or which were based on his stories.” of his upcoming book in his talk at the “Hooray for P. G. Wodehouse and Hollywood can be ordered Hollywood!” convention in Los Angeles (see page 4). directly from the publisher, McFarland, via their website: Although Wodehouse’s novels and short stories are http://www.mcfarlandpub.com (enter “Taves” in the all well known, his theatrical and film writings are a search field); or by calling McFarland’s order line: 800- different matter. Brian has overcome numerous hurdles 253-2187. The book can also be ordered from Amazon to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of at http://www.amazon.com (http://www.amazon.co.uk Wodehouse’s activities in Hollywood, revealing much in the United Kingdom) or from Barnes and Noble at new information about his work there. Following http://barnesandnoble.com; in both cases, enter “Brian are the pertinent facts regarding P. G. Wodehouse and Taves” in the search field. Hollywood, as provided by Brian himself. Brian will be bringing copies of the book to the “Wodehouse has been part of film and television Providence convention next year, and he will be selling history in a number of different ways through some them at a discount of $30. He is also willing to accept 150 movies and television productions since 1915. His emailed orders for discounted, autographed books now; plays, 70-plus novels, and even more numerous short shipping would be $4 within the U.S. and Canada, $8 stories have been made into many movie and television overseas. Make out your check to Brian Taves and send productions, not only in England and the United States it with your order to him. but also in Sweden, Germany, and India. During the

******* n PGWnet, David McDonough provided a Wodehouse sighting from the New York Times travel section of OMay 28. In a review of Brown’s Hotel (located in London’s Mayfair district), Mary Billard wrote: “New copies of English classics, not a moldy book among them, are a sweet touch, among them Dickens’s Little Dorrit or P. G. Wodehouse’s .” After sharing this quote, David challenged the group on PGWnet: “What do these two books have in common?” Give up? The answer is on page 18. Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 7 The Autograph Edition Told Again BY JOHN GRAHAM ast quarter I devoted the Collecting Column to a short history L of the Herbert Jenkins Autograph Edition—at 41 volumes, the longest uniform series of Wodehouse hardbacks published during Plum’s lifetime. The first eight books in the series made their debut exactly 50 years ago. To this day, the Autograph Edition remains an attractive and reasonably priced alternative to acquiring costly first editions of the same titles. Eileen McIlvaine’s comprehensive Wodehouse bibliography (1990) provides the interested collector with enough details to get started. You might not think there is much more to say about the Autograph Edition; in that, however, you would be wrong. Thanks to a recent letter from a loyal and observant reader of this column, I can now provide new information on the series’ dust wrappers. In addition, I will use this occasion to amend Ms. McIlvaine’s description and incomplete listing of the New Autograph Edition, a short-lived successor to the original series, published in England in the 1980s. In my previous column, I observed that the books in the Autograph Edition were wrapped in light-brown jackets decorated with a multicolored “flowered wallpaper motif of uniform design.” Not long afterward, I received a letter from longtime book dealer Charles E. Gould of Kennebunkport, Maine, who wrote: “The Autograph Edition dust wrapper . . . is actually a The 1986 taller format of Thank You, Jeeves design featuring a monogram formed from the publisher’s initials, HJ, and the publisher’s logo; what is on the spine of and seems to be distinctly a Hippogriff but elsewhere appears to be a Pegasus.” Charles went on to note that, beginning with its appearance on the spine of Meet Mr. Mulliner in 1927, the Herbert Jenkins logo evolved into a “sort of winged Promethean Centaur,” and it is this particular mythological incarnation that formed part of the Autograph Edition dust- wrapper design. Finally, he cautioned that “more exacting research is probably required before I publish the definitive 3-volume work on this formidable bibliographic topic.” If Charles uncovers any new details, I will certainly pass them along in a future column. The last three books in the Autograph Edition were published by Herbert Jenkins in 1966, which coincidently marked Plum’s 50th year with the firm. Not long after that, Herbert Jenkins was bought by Crescent Press, who changed its name to Barrie & Jenkins. After Plum’s death in 1975, the firm was taken over by the Hutchinson Group and soon became known as Century- Hutchinson. For the next few years, according to Kristin Thompson in her useful and (I think) underappreciated book, Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes, Hutchinson continued to keep Wodehouse titles in print “more for prestige than profit.” Then, The 1986 taller format of Something Fresh in 1986, they suddenly reissued four cornerstone titles (Right Ho, 8 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 Jeeves; Something Fresh; Summer Lightning; and Thank Wodehouse Influences in You, Jeeves) in a new, taller format (8¾˝ high rather than the standard 7½˝) with illustrated dust wrappers. The Drowsy Chaperone On the lower half of the inside front flaps of these wrappers appears the following statement: “Hutchinson BY HERB MOSKOVITZ announces an elegant New Autograph Edition of the best novels and short stories of P. G. Wodehouse. ack in the 1920s and 30s, Broadway musicals were Spaciously and attractively designed, these books B notoriously short on plot and character develop- will fulfill a long-felt need for a handsome standard ment but full of wonderful songs that were quickly collection of the works of the twentieth century’s adapted into the great American songbook. With the greatest writer of humour.” (Eerily reminiscent of the exception of frequent revivals of Anything Goes by Cole announcement accompanying the debut of the original Porter, P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, and others, you Autograph Edition 30 years earlier, this paragraph was don’t see that kind of a show around much anymore. dropped from the wrappers of all subsequent volumes Until now! There is a new 1920s musical on Broadway, in the series.) and it has just won Tonys for Best Featured Actress, Eileen McIlvaine provides a short description for Best Set Design, Best Costume Design, Best Book of nine books and dust wrappers in the New Autograph a Musical, and Best Original Score Written for the Edition in section K of her Wodehouse bibliography. Theater. It had nominations in just about every other In addition to the four titles that were issued in 1986, category for musicals. she lists these five issued in 1987: Psmith Journalist, It is The Drowsy Chaperone, Heavy Weather, The Mating Season, Psmith in the City, playing at the Marquis Theater and Ukridge. Surprisingly, she fails to list five other on Times Square, starring Sutton titles that also appeared in 1987: Uncle Fred in the Foster and the aforementioned Springtime, Uncle Dynamite, Meet Mr. Mulliner, Leave Best Featured Actress, Beth It to Psmith, and . As far as I Leavel, as the Drowsy Chaperone. know, no additional titles were ever forthcoming, Director/choreographer Casey and the New Autograph Edition ended with just 14 Nicholaw and his creative team volumes to its name. have lovingly crafted a tribute to In addition to overlooking five titles, McIlvaine the type of musicals that Porter, Wodehouse, Bolton, also fails to mention one of the series’ more interesting and Jerome Kern used to create. The music and lyrics distinguishing features: All of these books have by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison and book by Bob decorated endpapers. The Castle titles have Martin and Don McKellar all contribute to the final lavender endpapers adorned with small black — wonderful effect. Berkshires, no doubt. The endpapers for the Jeeves and There is a small New York theater company that Wooster titles as well as for Uncle Dynamite show a slim hosts a series of concert versions of old Broadway shows Edwardian gentleman in top hat and tails. Umbrellas called Musicals Tonight! Over the past few years they are the theme for the Psmith books, beer mugs for Meet have produced a few Kern/Wodehouse gems, including Mr. Mulliner, and boys’ caps for Ukridge. Oh, Lady! Lady!! and .The plot for A final note to round out this column: The dust these shows invariably involves a handsome young wrappers for the New Autograph Edition each have man and a lovely young woman who are about to get a different character depicted on their front covers married when misunderstandings and complications surrounded by a background of assorted fabrics from arise and threaten to end the couple’s engagement. men’s suits, so varied that only Jeeves would know all There is always a close friend for each of the leads who their names. I think Charles Gould would not quarrel will be involved in an even sillier subplot, and usually with my general description; he might, however, want a lovable criminal or two will further complicate the me to make note of the publisher’s logo that appears proceedings. There is also always a wisecracking butler on the spine and half-title and title pages. No longer or valet and a doddering parent. Seeing these revivals resembling a mythological creature, the logo looks to prepared me well to appreciate The Drowsy Chaperone, me like the antlers of an overgrown Western steer. Not because all of these plot devices and characters are in particularly Wodehousian, you say? Well, perhaps I this charming piece of fluff. should also mention that hanging from the right antler The Drowsy Chaperone opens with a man, a is—a top hat! Now that’s more like it. devoted musical theater fan, seated in a chair in his Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 9 typical New York City apartment, telling the audience about one of his favorite musicals of the 1920s, The A Hoax? Drowsy Chaperone. As he talks and plays the original BY DAVID LANDMAN cast album, the actors who performed in the show at the old Morosco Theater appear in his apartment and hy haven’t you been paying attention? Now I perform the show for him—and us. The story involves Whave to start all over again from the middle and a young couple who are about to be married, but a work my way to both ends! This time, don’t let your misunderstanding arises. There are also a couple of mind wander. Mine wandered in 1967 and, except for funny gangsters, a doddering parent, a wisecracking a postcard from Ypsilanti, Michigan, saying “Heigh- butler, and amusing confidantes—you get the picture. ho” (or perhaps it was the other way ’round), hasn’t They are all here. The Drowsy Chaperone is both a satire been heard from since. of the 1920s musicals and a valentine to them. So much for the Benchley imitation. Now to my Other conventions from the period that are article. incorporated into The Drowsy Chaperone are the Having nothing to do last Thursday—or perhaps novelty song where someone sings while performing it was next Thursday—(there goes Benchley again!) I some unusual physical act—in this case roller-skating began to while away the time examining the backs of blindfolded—a Latin lothario, a new dance that the the book jackets in my Wodehouse collection. (I am entire company learns and performs with great aplomb, saving the fronts for Sundays at the nursing home.) an anthem that has nothing to do with the plot but is And lo! When I got to the back of Jeeves and the Tie That there nevertheless, multiple weddings at the curtain, a Binds (Simon & Schuster, 1971) what had previously deus ex machina literally coming down from the sky, appeared to my failing eyes to be a sepia snapshot of a people singing on the wings of a biplane going to Rio, winter scene in old Bucharest turned out to be a photo and the occasional song that has a beautiful melody but of Plum at the age of 90 touching his toes. At least terrible lyrics. that’s what the photo purports to be. But how do we There is a certain kind of silliness and formula in know? the musicals from this period, and yet we never get tired All we can see is what appears to be a man (the figure of seeing the shows or movies adapted from them. Nor is wearing a tie) or a gourd bent over. But, whether do we tire of the many pastiches that have appeared human being or gourd, in either case the face is not over the years, such as The Boyfriend, Dames at Sea, and visible. All that is given to us from which to determine Thoroughly Modern Millie.Very much the way we all feel identity is a nose, the top of a left ear (it might be a about Wodehouse stories! The more you know about potato bud), and the dome of a bald head. And there the old musical shows, the more you will enjoy The lies the rub. (By the way, if you rub a bald head, you are Drowsy Chaperone, but even if you know little, you will bound to have luck—whether good or bad, I forget). love the show for its infectious tunes, lively dancing, Frankly, it looks to me rather like an early telescopic and energetic cast. It is at the Marquis Theater, which photo of a gibbous moon that has been superimposed stands on the site of the old Morosco Theater—where upon the shoulders of a bending headless man. Or, for the fictionalDrowsy Chaperone supposedly played in all we know, it may be a Sharper Image store dummy 1928 (just another one of the in-jokes known to theater projecting an early telescopic photo of a gibbous moon fans). on its head. They sell stranger things. I have been told that those who did not have prime Let us take a closer look at this purported head. orchestra seats (I did) have trouble seeing the action Not too close or you’ll upset my drink. To make our that does not take place in the center of the stage. The investigation scientific, divide the head (mentally, or Marquis is a huge theater, so be careful where you are course) into quadrants (threes) along its North-South sitting. and East-West axes. And now that I’ve used the words “divide” and “axes” you must be thoroughly confused. Never mind. Let us not split hairs (oops!). You know what I mean. Cast your eyes on the lower right quadrant. Does Editor’s note: Several other TWS members who have seen not that irregular dark spot look suspiciously like the The Drowsy Chaperone have also raved about it. Reviewers, lunar Sea of Myrmecology (don’t bother to look it up; virtually all of whom gave the show high marks, have noted the it’s the scientific study of ants)? It defies credibility to Wodehouse-Bolton-Kern connection. accept that Wodehouse had an exact image of the Sea 10 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 of Myrmecology tattooed on the top of his head. A to believe he would wear such a revolting combination profile of the Lubavitcher Rebbe I could accept, but in the presence of the large whirly pattern of the room’s the Sea of Myrmecology? Don’t make me laugh. (Better drapes? The man would have had to be mad! And yet, don’t make me cry.) besides, are those floral whorls on the cornice or are they satellite photos of Atlantic hurricanes? Notice also that the tie is depending not from the center of the collar where it would normally be, but rather falling askew from under the right lap or, perhaps, it is being held in the teeth. And notice further that it is not the overpiece of the tie—it is apparently is tucked into the belt—but rather the underpiece (French: das unterStuck), that vestigial appendage which no man knows what to do with (with which no man knows what to do? what does which man do with it?). Personally, I cut these useless bits off below the knot, pick out the stitching, and use them as matching breast-pocket handkerchiefs. Natty. And why is the tie so wrinkled? (Not to mention the trousers. Don’t look at the socks!) Are we to believe that Ethel was so lax a helpmeet as not to iron her husband’s ties? My Elizabeth (bless her) spends many a Saturday night ironing my ties and an occasional spat. (Yes, we do have an occasional spat, but these soon blow over and we laugh at ourselves as we apply the Neosporin.) And though Eliza’s burden has been made easier by the fact that I have cut off the small ends of my ties, sometimes she is still at it when I awake Tuesday morning. This paragraph doesn’t seem to be much of a proof, but I leave it in because it has a few good gags. Finally, undeniable evidence that we have been duped by a hoax photo is that enormous hump on the subject’s back. We have been assured by Col. Murphy in his book In Search of Wodehouse’s Hump that Wodehouse never had a hump and wouldn’t accept one if it was Plum or Not Plum? David Landman plumbs offered to him on a platter with watercress around it. the depths of the mystery. And indeed, a hump was once so proffered by A. A. Milne, who had it left over from an early version of Next, look at the upper left quadrant very near Pooh Bear. the center. Do you see two circular depressions? Not If it is not a hump, then what is that thing? In the there. There! Now it is well known that the depressions interests of science I sought to discover if the back of a suffered by writers are notoriously polyhedral and can man touching his toes would naturally bulge dorsally easily be alleviated by vigorous application of a cold like the Grampian Hills and to that purpose asked a six-pack of Red Bull. Those in the photo are obviously number of my friends and not a few casual passers-by volcano craters. to bend over so that I might see if they billowed in the What other evidence is there that the person (or back. Sad to say, the most my test cases were able to gourd) in the photograph is not Plum? Consider the achieve was a nod. And only a few could manage that fact that the figure is wearing a checked shirt and a tie much. And so my researches ran into dry sands and I that appears to have tiny polka-dots. Granted that P. into dry martinis. G. Wodehouse was no fashion plate, but nevertheless, No, it all adds up to one thing—a hoax. And I for I defy anyone to convince me that he was sartorially so one intend to write a stern letter to Simon & Schuster. far gone as to combine polka dots and checks! Forsooth! Or maybe just Schuster. Simon is still fuming over that And to clinch the matter, can we reasonably be asked mayonnaise bomb. Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 11 My Introduction to P. G. Wodehouse BY FRANK V. PIORE ne is usually introduced to the works of P. G. sentence! Before long, I was scrounging through used- OWodehouse in some variation of the following book stores and every mail-order book catalog I could manner: (A) A Kind and Enlightened Benefactor takes lay my hands on for further novels by Plum. pity on a Poor Unenlightened Blighter who has been The end result is that I now have an entire four- weaned since the age of reason on a steady diet of horse foot-long, three-shelf bookcase in my personal library, operas, hugger-muggers, and, if you will excuse the dedicated to works by and about The Master. And I am expression, “relevant literature.” (B) Said KAEB slips a now on my second copy of The Code of the Woosters, Plum novel into the PUB’s stack of reading matter. (C) since I practically wore out my original copy with all Before long, epiphany and conversion to a lifetime of the re-readings. absolute reading pleasure ensues. By day I teach grammar school, but in the evenings My own introduction to PGW was nothing at all I crank out plays for the high school and junior high like that. Sometime in the mid-1960s, my soon-to- school market. Since 1976, some 50 or so of my titles be brother-in-law got me interested in the daily radio have seen print. All are comedies, and I am sure there broadcasts of Jean Shepherd, humorist and raconteur is scarcely one that does not reflect the influence of the extraordinaire. If you are unfamiliar with Jean Shepherd, great man. think of the movie A Christmas Story, which was based Incidentally, in a later broadcast, Jean Shepherd went on his stories, narrated by him, and also featured him on and on about an author whom he would not name, in a cameo. Sometime in the ’70s, Shepherd did a show but since he did mention the titles of some of his books, about Plum. Strangely enough, I don’t recall him saying I was quickly able to discern it was Thorne Smith. I much about how wonderful an experience reading a went the same route as with Plum’s work, buying up PGW novel was. Rather, he went on quite a bit about all I could get my hands on. (Unfortunately, Smith the titles. He made, as I recall, much of the title No died young and his oeuvre consists of about 20 or so Nudes Is Good Nudes. novels.) I was certainly impressed with Smith’s humor Well, if it was good enough for Shepherd, I figured, and ahead-of-his time plotting, but I couldn’t help how wrong could I go by trying out a book or two. At thinking, “Now, if he had only spelled his name with that time, I was regularly receiving a mail-order catalog a ‘P’ . . .” from an outfit that specialized in selling used books that had once been part of pay-as-you-go lending libraries. Sure enough, the current catalog had three books by Plum listed. I ordered all three (in for a dime, in for a dollar and all that, you know). In July, Tony Ring forwarded some information about When they arrived, the first one I delved into was a New York–based dance theater company called the Do Butlers Burgle Banks? I suppose it was the alliteration Wooster Group. Tony speculated that they might have that attracted me. I thought it was a fine book and all, a connection with Wooster Street, where Overlook and promised myself that I would read the other two Press, U.S. publishers of the paperback reissues of PGW sooner or later. Fortunately for me, it was sooner. The books, is based. Investigative reporter Amy Plofker second book, you see, was The Code of the Woosters. followed up this lead and discovered that, according to Epiphany. their website, the Wooster Group started in the 1970s Conversion. on the selfsame Wooster Street. “Pity,” writes Amy. When I say read, I really meant re- and re- and re- “I’d have liked to see their interpretation of Code of the read, for I found it was impossible to progress through Woosters, for instance, in rhythmic dance.” the book in the customary strictly linear fashion—that is, read page one, turn page, onto page two, and so forth. Northwodes member Richard Streum tells us that I kept going over and over what I had just read before Advanced Book Exchange, a popular online source for venturing forward in the book. I could not believe it! used books, recently released a list of their 10 most- Here was a novel that not only had you laughing out searched authors in 2005. At number 7 was our own loud on every page but also managed to achieve the PGW. To view the full list, go to http://www.abebooks. same effect with every paragraph. Scratch that—every com/docs/10-anniversary/powers-10.shtml. 12 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 Letter from England BY ELIN WOODGER

es, yes, I know—you thought I had given up these In July there was another celebration of a rather Yletters, didn’t you? After all, it’s been more than interesting nature when a groom-to-be and his best a year since the last Letter from England, and it was man kicked off what was to be a week-long stag party Kris Fowler, not me, who wrote that one. Speaking of by joining Norman’s Wodehouse Walk. It was an Kris, she was here again earlier this year for what has unusual way to begin one’s wedding fun, but entirely apparently become an annual dose of campanology. appropriate, I suppose, if one is a keen Wodehousian, Aside from reading P. G. Wodehouse, nothing makes which apparently was the case for both groom and bride. her happier than pulling on a bell rope, and the best By the way, Norman estimates that his July place for that is England, so over she comes for a week Wodehouse Walk was his 99th (or thereabouts), which or two to ring bells throughout the countryside, not to means he hits his century this fall. He is now making mention a few in London. In late April Norman and noises about 100 being enough for anybody and has I hooked up with her down in Salisbury, and we three taken the precaution of typing out the entire Walk gamboled about the area, eyeballing ancient monoliths so that some other poor mug (watch out, Christine and attending evensong at the cathedral, as one does. Hewitt!) can take it over in the future. To find out It is always jolly good to see Kris and other when a Wodehouse Walk is scheduled to take place Wodehousians from abroad who find it worthwhile to (hopefully a time when you are in London), see Wooster pop into the country and see what’s happening here. Sauce or the U.K. Society’s website (www.eclipse.co.uk/ More recently we saw Marilyn McGregor, erstwhile Wodehouse; click on “Future Events”). membership secretary of The Wodehouse Society. These two sources, of course, are also where to go Ordinarily this wouldn’t be news, since Marilyn is for other news on the U.K. Society’s doings, including always coming to London (flying over from Davis, their thrice-yearly evenings at the Savage Club. The California), and we always see her when she’s here. most recent gathering, in July, featured Jonathan But this, dear reader, happened to be a very Special Cecil, one of the finest readers of Wodehouse books on Occasion. tape, who wowed the crowd with a number of songs Marilyn, you see, was born on August 1, 1926, and mentioned in the PGW canon. These evenings are for the past few years she has chosen to be in London always well-attended and a lot of fun. for her birthday, inviting a few friends to join her for Meanwhile, the Society’s cricket team, the Gold a private celebration at the Lansdowne Club, where Bats, have been whizzing about the countryside, she stays. When Norman and I realized that this year meeting all comers. Well, not quite, but in addition marked the Big 80, well, it was the work of a moment to to their two annual games against Dulwich College’s assume party-planning responsibilities. The result was Dusters and the Society of London a bash at the Lansdowne attended by 24 of her close (the latter played according to 1895 rules), members chums (including one who had flown over from Davis of the Gold Bats also took part in games at the for the occasion). Edward Cazalet offered the evening’s Charterhouse School (playing against the masters main toast, a humorous and moving tribute to Marilyn’s there) and in Kent (playing alongside members of the years of service to The Wodehouse Society in addition Siegfried Sassoon Society). These were not official Gold to her many other sterling qualities. As Marilyn is also Bats games, mind you—those took place in June, when a keen (and renowned) Sherlockian, Catherine Cooke the results were a tie with the Dusters (a very unusual offered another toast: “Confusion to the Pinkertons!” outcome in cricket) and a draw with the Sherlockians (Don’t ask me to explain that one.) Then Tony Ring had (much more usual—but don’t ask me to tell you the Marilyn choose the winners of a Wooster Sauce raffle of difference). Piccadilly Jim DVDs, and I had the honor of presenting The Gold Bats’ games are always fun, and the her with a Book of Memories—an album containing Dulwich game in particular is worth noting because personal notes, letter, cards, photos, etc., sent by friends of two of the players involved. Playing for the Dusters from around the world. All in all a splendid evening, was one A. A. Milne—and, for the Gold Bats, our own and I have the impression from Marilyn that she rather . One can’t help but feel that Wodehouse enjoyed it. would have appreciated the symmetry! Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 13 Rivals of P. G. Wodehouse: H. Allen Smith BY DAN COHEN he most popular humor writer in America during days in the ninth grade. According to Smith, he was TWorld War II was H. Allen Smith. Three of his working in a barbershop shining shoes when his sister’s books, published in 1941, 1943, and 1944, were on boyfriend, a reporter on the local paper, asked him if he the New York Herald Tribune best-seller lists for 108 wanted a newspaper job. He figured it was better than weeks. That’s impressive because it was a time when shining shoes, even if it paid only three bucks a week. best-seller lists actually meant something. He started as a proofreader, became a reporter, and was Of course, the Herald Tribune is long gone, and so successful because he wrote funny stuff, even if it wasn’t is H. Allen Smith’s reputation. That’s not surprising. all true. He worked for small-town newspapers all over Most of his work was nonfiction—well, sort of—and the Midwest, Southwest and South, but his goal was very topical. The modern reader would find it dated and New York. He got there in 1929, just in time for the sometimes incomprehensible. For example, in Lost in the stock market crash and the depression: Horse Latitudes he describes being at a party and trying to impress people by his knowledge of world affairs. He Within two months of my arrival in New York, says he was “Kaltenborning.” If you know what that the town went to pot. A gadget called ‘the bull means, you were probably born during the Roosevelt market’ reached its peak, and then something administration. Today one might say “Rathering” or, happened to it, something far beyond my to be completely up to date, “Couricing.” comprehension, and people began leaping Wodehouse included a section from one of Smith’s from the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers as books in The Weekend Book of Humor that he and his if those towers had been functionally designed agent, Scott Meredith, edited in 1952. They called as springboards for Gehenna. Smith “the screwball’s Boswell.” Though Wodehouse and Smith regularly sold their work to the mass market It was a bad time for New York and the rest of the and middlebrow magazines like the Saturday Evening country, but it was a good time for newspapers. There Post, and both did time in Hollywood, I have not seen were loads of them, and Smith’s cynical, breezy, mildly any evidence that they either met or corresponded. risqué humor was what the masses wanted. Mostly he Certainly their backgrounds were different. Wodehouse was known for his interviews. “I have interviewed infant went to an English public school (albeit prodigies and old ladies who said they a minor one). To hear Smith tell the were present when Lincoln was shot story of his childhood, he barely went to . . . naked women and presidential school at all. candidates . . . Albert Einstein and a Smith was born on December 19, man who professed to see the spirits of 1907 or 1906 (sources differ), in the the departed in a tub of freshly shucked southern Illinois town of McLeansboro, oysters. . . . It is not an exceptional Illinois. Of his mother he wrote, “From list. Almost any working New York 1900 on she was turning out Smiths at newspaperman might better it.” an alarming rate. . . . Before the current In 1941 Smith’s book Low Man was turned off there were nine children. on a Totem Pole hit the best-seller lists. They all inherit a magnificent sense of There was a war on, and Americans responsibility from my father who when were reading H. Allen Smith, not he grows weary of life at home drops only on the home front but on out of sight for three or four months at troop trains and military camps. He a stretch and finally comes home with now had enough money to quit the wondrous tales of adventure.” H. Allen Smith daily newspaper grind and work as a The family moved around a lot, freelancer. He wrote magazine articles and at one point Smith “attended St. Mary’s parochial and radio scripts, and he put in time in Hollywood. school but thinking back now, I can’t recall that I ever It is Smith’s brief career in California that will be learned anything.” His schooling ended in Huntington, of most interest to Wodehouse fans. He signed up Indiana, where he dropped out of high school after two with Paramount in 1943, six years after Plum had 14 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 left Hollywood. It had not changed. The first thing H. Allen Smith had one more brief burst of fame. Smith discovered as a Hollywood writer was that he In 1967 he wrote an article entitled “Nobody Knows didn’t write anything. He spent his first day filling out More About Chili Than I Do”. That got him involved forms: “I wrote more that first day than I did during in a highly publicized Chili Cookoff with Texas the remainder of the six months, and all I wrote was chili maven Wick Fowler; it ended in a tie. Smith’s my name.” original chili recipe is available on the Internet (http:// Smith had an office in the Writers Building. “I sat whatscookingamerica.net/Soup/SmithChili.htm). alone for a while and then I began to hear yips and snarls Smith kept plugging away at what he called “The coming from other parts of the building. ‘Good God!’ Business” until his death in 1976. Today none of his I thought. ‘Can that be the writers at work?’” Later he 30 or so books remains in print, but used copies of learned that writers were allowed to bring their dogs to many of them are readily available. Reading (or in my work. Then he discovered that the desk and chairs in case rereading) some of them was a pleasant exercise in his office had been chewed. First he assumed the office nostalgia. And if you weren’t there, a dose of H. Allen had been occupied by a dog-owning writer. “Later on Smith will give you a look at some of what life was like I revised this theory and concluded that the desk and in America way back in the middle of the last century. chair had been gnawed by a writer.” Smith’s description of director Cecil B. De Mille in action resonates with every reader of Wodehouse’s A New Way to Pay Your Dues Hollywood stories: “The Master puts on a bigger show than the actors.” De Mille would arrive followed by a BY JEAN TILLSON half dozen of his personal aides. “His eyes were fixed on the scene before him and they stayed there. He took off hile you were off shrimping at Herne Bay or his hat and tossed it over his shoulder without looking Wtrying on white mess jackets in the South of back. A hand came up and snatched it before it traveled France, your TWS officers have been working their two feet. He took off his necktie and cast it into the fingers to the bone arranging a way to make it easier for air behind him. A necktie man grabbed it. Slowly the you to pay your membership dues. And, at last, they Master unbuttoned his jacket. . . . He let the jacket believe they have achieved success! The Wodehouse slip from his arms but it never came near the ground. Society now has a PayPal account and can therefore A jacket man behind him swept it out of the air as it accept online payments via that service. Instructions started to fall. I was surprised then, to see Mr. De Mille and the appropriate PayPal button have been added to roll up his own sleeves.” www.wodehouse.org/tws, and we encourage you to take While working at Paramount, Smith met one old advantage of this new capability. In addition to general Dulwich boy. Raymond Chandler had an office down ease of use, we are hopeful that this payment option the hall. Smith liked Chandler and didn’t have anything will increase our international membership since our nasty or very interesting to say about him. friends outside the United States will no longer have to After his brief time in Hollywood, Smith went go to all the fuss and bother of remitting their dues in back to New York, and then, like so many other city U.S. funds. dwellers in post–World War II America, he moved to the suburbs, where he began writing funny books and articles about “rural life.” He was a genuine celebrity during the 1950s. Not only was he turning out a huge Benjamin Disraeli, Richard Wagner, number of articles and books, he appeared regularly on radio and was even a guest on Edward R. Murrow’s TV and P. G. Wodehouse show Person to Person in 1959. Smith became a celebrity Contributed by Joel J. Brattin endorser for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Can you imagine a humor writer today being paid to endorse anything? n the July 3, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, Adam But times and tastes change. Many of the IGopnik reviews recent books about the Prime newspapers and magazines that had once published his Minister and Victorian novelist Benjamin Disraeli work disappeared, and radio was swamped by television. (1804–81), noting that “Disraeli’s English history was, Smith made a few tries at writing for television, but in any event, partly fantasy—a bedtime story served up it never amounted to much. His brand of wise-guy for his none too bright young acolytes, a kind of ‘Ring’ humor simply went out of fashion. cycle designed for Bertie Wooster.” Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 15 “What’s Going On Out There?” BY JOHN HAYWARD

John, a British expatriate living in Los Angeles who is also a ground. member of the Hollywood Cricket Club, spoke on PGW and At the same time, the batsman is using his bat to the HCC at the Hooray for Hollywood! convention in August defend his wicket and to hit the ball to score runs. A 2005. He has kindly provided this explanation of the game for run is scored when a batsman hits the ball far enough those of us who don’t know our wickets from our bowls. that he and the other batsman can exchange places before a fielder can throw the ball in to the wicket. If he game of cricket is played between two teams, the ball is hit to the boundary of the playing field and Teach with eleven players. The captains toss a coin, crosses this line without touching the ground (home the winner having the choice of his team batting or run) it is signaled by the umpire that the batsman has fielding first. During the game, two players are always scored six runs and neither batsman has to run. Should at bat at the same time, one at each wicket. A wicket the ball be hit across the boundary along the ground, it comprises three wooden stumps about three feet tall counts as four runs. which have two wooden dowels (known as bails) Cricket has no foul areas and two umpires positioned in slight depressions at the top of the (sometimes in professional matches a third umpire may stumps. The batsman (batter) facing the bowler must be a camera), and the leather ball must weigh not less stand between two lines called the batting and bowling than 5½ ounces nor more than 5¾ ounces. The 22- creases (the batter’s box in baseball). But, unlike yards-long area between the wickets should be likened baseball, he may step out of this area to hit the ball, if to a lawn-bowling grass surface. The duration of a he wishes. cricket match usually depends on the regulations of the The bowler (pitcher in baseball) runs up to the local authority, and it can be won, lost, drawn, or tied. bowling crease of one wicket and bowls the ball at the [Editor’s note: A tie, when two teams score exactly the other wicket. Bowling differs from pitching in that same number of runs, is a rare occurrence.] the ball must be delivered with a straight arm and not This short description does not attempt to explain thrown. The bowler’s objective is to hit the opposite the intricacies of the game, but rather to indicate wicket with the ball and, in so doing, dislodge the bails, what’s going on out there! Cricket is the grandfather of or cause the batsman to offer a catch by hitting the baseball, anyway. In fact, three cricketers are in the Hall ball in the air (pop fly). To achieve either of these (to of Fame at Cooperstown, New York. They are Harry put the batsman out), bowlers use various speeds and and George Wright and a Mr. Chadwick (one of the strategies, usually by causing the ball to bounce off the earliest baseball writers and a great cricket journalist of the 18th century). Wikiing the Time Away Stephen Brown found this item in an article by Stacy Shiff in The New Yorker, July 31, 2006. Wodehouse Wiki ikipedia may be the world’s most ambitious wiki is an online encyclopedia to which anybody W vanity press. There are two hundred thousand A can contribute articles; one can also edit existing registered users on the English-language site, of articles. Recently Nathan Filizzi announced on whom about thirty-three hundred—fewer than two PGWnet that he had set up a wiki devoted to P. G. per cent—are responsible for seventy per cent of the Wodehouse—see http://wodehouse.wikia.com/wiki/ work. The site allows you to compare contributors by Main_Page. Nathan encourages his fellow PGW fans to the number of edits they have made, by the number of “rally around and help with adding content and such.” articles that have been judged by community vote to be However, as “Aunt Agatha” noted on PGWnet, this may outstanding (these “featured” articles often appear on be the equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle, since the site’s home page), and by hourly activity, in graph Wikipedia already has entries devoted to Wodehouse— form. A seventeen-year-old P. G. Wodehouse fan who see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse. specializes in British peerages leads the featured-article Whichever site you use, do try and contribute to this pack, with fifty-eight entries. expanding online Wodehouse scholarship! 16 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 Capital! Capital! Poetry In Defense of Jonathan Ames he inimitable Joan Roberts was crowned the BY PETER CANNON TCapital! Capital! Poet Laureate and won the Anglers’ Rest Prize for this wonderful poem. fter reading the two dismissive notices of Jonathan A Ames’s Wodehouse-inspired novel, Wake Up, Takeover Sir!, in the Winter 2004 issue of Plum Lines, I was in My kitchen’s invaded—yes it is, no hurry to try what sounded like a travesty. When with things that crackle, pop, and fizz. I finally did read Wake Up, Sir!, I was pleasantly I see on every rack and shelf surprised (as an Anthony Powell fan, I was delighted to provisions I never bought myself. find the narrator reading A Dance to the Music of Time), and later took the opportunity to hear Ames speak at There’s cold champagne, I kid you not, Manhattan’s New York Society Library. with quickening spirits by the bot. Ames opened the program by reading from an I swear before my lord and maker earlier novel, The Extra Man, whose young gentleman I can’t explain that cocktail shaker. narrator, Louis Ives, counts Wodehouse as a favorite (along with F. Scott Fitzgerald and the British TV sitcom The yogurt’s gone, and so’s the brie Are You Being Served? ), and then from Wake Up, Sir! He but now there’s tons of eggs and b. gave fair warning of their bawdy content. Extracts from My Lipton’s vanished and left me reeling both books drew laughs from the audience of 30 or so to find Earl Grey and best Darjeeling. polite, well-heeled listeners. When asked during question time about any Look at those warmers and tongs and trays. possible conflict with the Wodehouse estate, Ames They’re foreign to my domestic ways. admitted that his provisional title for Wake Up, Sir! I’ll claim the teapot, but you’re a dreamer, was Home, Jeeves. His publisher’s lawyers persuaded if you think I paid for that cow creamer! him to change it. When the lawyers also advised clearly distinguishing the character called Jeeves in his book You can doubt and debunk, without abstention; from Wodehouse’s Jeeves, Ames added a passage that you can prove there isn’t a hidden dimension. highlights the differences. For example, he said, the But the evidence shows, beyond surmise, original Jeeves likes to fish in his spare time, whereas that Jeeves dropped in to Woosterize. his Jeeves has no hobbies. (Of course, we know he meant shrimping.) Googling Wodehouse’s Earth Ames pointed out that the novel’s loose, episodic structure owes a lot to another literary influence, Don BY HETTY LITJENS Quixote (also evoked in The Extra Man). Like the he Wodehouse tour project takes advantage of addled Spaniard who, after reading too many romances, Tthe latest developments of the Internet, though fancies himself a chivalrous knight, so Ames’s hapless it is still a “work under construction.” Google Earth hero, Alan Blair, imagines he’s Bertie Wooster after allows us to visit the places where Wodehouse lived and immersing himself in Wodehouse. If Ames’s Jeeves has lets us discover the places we know from In Search of only a limited role in the action, particularly during Blandings, the places that inspired Wodehouse for the the second half set at a writer’s colony, it’s because settings of his characters. We can see that quite often there’s a strong suggestion that he exists only in Alan’s these sites he described in his novels are situated close imagination. No other character in Wake Up, Sir! sees to sites he frequented in his life. Though Wodehouse or converses with Jeeves. himself did not fancy flying, in the tour we can now In contrast to Wodehouse, Ames writes dark skim over London and New York, from Bertie’s place to comedy. In Wodehouse’s world, drunkenness is the Drones Club, from Hunstanton Hall to Skegness. funny. In Wake Up, Sir! the hero’s drinking leads to It’s so bracing. The internet link to the the Wodehouse big trouble. Ames has in effect done with Bertie what Tour Placemark can be found here: http://bbs.keyhole. George Bernard Shaw did with Sherlock Holmes when com/ubb/download.php?Number=571160. You will the playwright created Professor Higgins—shown what want to install Google Earth first (go to http://earth. such an impossible character would be like if he existed google.com), then download the tour. in the real world. If this is a send-up, it’s also an act Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 17 of homage. Ames admitted that once during a period Emsworth Ah, he is come, as has been foretold! of depression, reading Wodehouse cheered him up How far away would you say he is, young considerably. George? Ames concluded the evening’s entertainment by George (squinting) No more than thirty ells, my passing out “business” cards, one each for Louis Ives and . Shall I shoot him now? Henry Harrison (another character in The Extra Man), Emsworth Nay! Stay thy hand. The Empress must and by delivering at the top of his lungs the “Hairy be informed. We must seek her will in call,” which put me in mind of -hoo-o-o-o-ey! (For this matter. more on the “Hairy call,” go to www.jonathanames. com.) Ames may strike some as an odd fellow, the type INTERIOR: DEEP BELOW THE CASTLE you might not want to invite to your club, but he is a The Empress (Frank Oz) is a monstrous pig, ancient serious literary author whose work many, if certainly and cruel, who lies in the bowels of the castle, plotting not all, TWS members would find amusing. world conquest, emerging only at night to gorge herself on the unwary peasantry.

Crimewave! INTERIOR: LADY CONSTANCE’S SOLAR BY LESLIE STEM Meanwhile, Lady Constance (Cate Blanchett) is in her solar with her niece Jane (Liv Tyler). Jane has just told his script arrived too late for consideration in her of a strange young man she met out in the woods, Tlast summer’s Great Wodehouse Movie Pitch Sir George (Orlando Bloom). Challenge, but as Leslie writes: “Sometimes when I have a great but unformed idea, I put it on the back Jane But Sir George is a fair and well-spoken burner of my mind to percolate, and soon there it is, young knight, Aunt Constance! And he bright and sparkling, ready to be transcribed. At other says a lot of the timber wants seeing to, times it is like a body, weighted down with stones at the badly! bottom of the lake, and there is no telling when it may Lady C. I have heard no good report of this Knight emerge from the depths. The following is the result of of the Scarlet Cummerbund! You are to the latter process.” be betrothed to Sir Roegate!

CRIMEWAVE! Pauses. Enter Beach (John Rhys-Davies). Directed by Peter Jackson Lady C Yes, Beach, what is it? OPENING SCENE Beach Mr. Baxter has arrived, your ladyship. The camera soars and swoops over the glittering peaks Lady C (gasps) Mr. Baxter! Jane, we are saved! and dense forests of the land of Shropshire (New Zealand), past quaint villages and a puffing steam- Will Baxter be able to save them? Armed only with his engine, until, with a crash of cymbals and trumpets, the magic spectacles, will he discover the secret flowerpot and menacing turrets and ominous windows of Blandings defeat the evil Lord Emsworth and his menacing airgun? Castle arise from a mist-shrouded lake, encircled by Will Jane find true love? And what of that darker evil— phantasmagoric gardens. Below us, we see a little figure on a motorbike. It is our hero, Baxter (Andy Serkis). THE EMPRESS?! His magic spectacles, which enable him to see another’s evil purposes, seem to shine with a light of their own. Ahead, peering balefully from a tower window, is the Master of , Lord Emsworth (Ian McKellen).

INTERIOR: CASTLE TOWER Beside Lord Emsworth is his deceptively young and ******** innocent-looking minion, George (Elijah Wood). In The answer to David McDonough’s PGWnet question on George’s hands is a strange weapon. He is fiddling with page 7: In both books, a main character does a stretch some dials on it. in the pokey. 18 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 Chapters Corner CONDUCTED BY SUSAN COHEN

t’s fun being with other fans, and it’s fun reading he Broadway Special’s June 9 meeting at the Iabout what other fans are doing. So please use this TPlayers Club was small but select, which means column to tell the world—the Wodehouse world, that we had a lively, well-focused conversation. Before is—about your chapter’s activities, zany and otherwise. discussing several Mulliner stories, however, we broke Representatives of chapters, please send all info to me, with tradition and discussed chapter business first: Rosie M. Banks, otherwise known as Susan Cohen (see the election of new officers, daring plans for future Chapter One below). Anyone reading this who is not meetings, possible philanthropic activities, and ways a member of a local chapter but would like to attend a to help with the Providence convention. Exhausted by meeting or become a member can get in touch with the this unaccustomed effort, we gratefully returned to the contact person listed. works of the Master. The highlight of the evening was Good news! A new chapter has been formed in Evelyn Herzog’s warbling of “Hard Hearted Hannah, Oregon. See the Portland Wodehouse Society for details. the Vamp of Savannah,” and it was agreed that George (he of “”) Mulliner was right. Anglers’ Rest It was definitely not the song to sing when offering a (Seattle and vicinity) cup of tea to a terrified woman on a train. Contact: Susan Collicott We couldn’t get the Players Club for our September 8 meeting, but the Salmagundi Club is kindly providing us with space instead. The Salmagundi is at Phone: 47 5th Avenue; that’s between 11th and 12th Streets. Email: Meeting time: 6:00­–8:30 p.m. We will discuss The Luck of the Bodkins, British edition preferred. The American he Anglers’ Rest meets every other month (aside from edition as originally published was somewhat shorter Tholiday madness months when all bets are off) at than the British edition and lacked some of the best various locales in the Puget Sound area. Much discussion parts. But you’ll be all right as long as your copy of any topic in any way associated with Wodehouse begins with the truly immortal line: “Into the face of takes place—and then everything else, too. We attend the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel local arts events and try new restaurants, pubs, and Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive teahouses. We read passages from favorite Wodehouse shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces books out loud; trade interesting Wodehouse-related that an Englishman is about to talk French.” Miss items; and lend books, tapes, CDs and DVDs to Postlethwaite tells us that the bar at the Salmagundi one another with abandon. Join us for a relaxing or opens at 5:00 p.m., and dinner is available from 5:30 invigorating time with folks of like mind and attitude. on. In addition to discussing The Luck of the Bodkins at the September meeting, we will finalize our plans Blandings Castle Chapter for celebrating Plum’s birthday on the afternoon of (Greater San Francisco Bay area) Saturday, October 21. We will honor the Master with Contact: Ed and Missy Ratcliffe a Meal of Some Sort, and the birthday event may very well include other activities. On Friday, December 1, the Broadway Special will meet at the Players Club, Phone: from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Email: Buck-U-Uppo Bottling Company The Broadway Special (Seaside, Oregon, and vicinity) (New York City and vicinity) Contact: Sandy Rea Contact: Amy Plofker

Phone: Email: Email: Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 19 Capital! Capital! prize at the Hollywood convention), wife of TWS (Washington, D.C., and vicinity) member Douglas Bellew, was going to have a baby boy. Contact: Jeff Peterson Cheers followed and much clapping of hands, not to mention innumerable kudos and playing of kazoos. We suggested names for the baby: Pongo, Gussie, Bingo, Phone: Edwin, and Clarence (after Clarence Chugwater). Email: No one suggested Pelham. Many comic articles were distributed at the meeting, most sent by John Baesch, uring the summer Capital! Capital! rested after who gets the English newspapers. The articles got lots Dhosting the TWS East Coast Binge in late April. of laughs, as did one American write-up courtesy of But now, tanned, rested, and, as sayeth that other writer, Murray Wilson, headline reading: “Rogue Aunt Loots fit for “treasons, strategems and spoils,” the chapter is Grandparents’ House while Family is Away.” Rogue about to kick off its fall activities. On September 8 we aunts are worse than rogue elephants. The meeting will meet at the Pickford Theater of the National Library progressed; the usual chatting and gabbing went on. of Congress for a showing of the 1937 RKO film A Several literary topics were covered. The Flashman Damsel in Distress, based on the Wodehouse novel of series. The life and times of Joe Keenan, author of the same name. The movie stars Fred Astaire, George Lucky Star. And writer Terry Pratchett. Burns, Gracie Allen, and Joan Fontaine. Chapter It was now time for crime. With their usual aplomb, member Brian Taves will be on hand that night to sign David and Karen Ruef presented us with a Mystery copies of his newly released book P. G. Wodehouse and Quiz to solve. But the Chaps were ready for them. Hollywood: Screenwriting, Satires, and Adaptations. (See Armed with guns, masks, bottles of poison (so to speak), page 7.) And later in the fall Capital! Capital! member a can of soup in honor of safecracker Soup Slattery, Anne Stone will do a presentation that is described as and even truncheons and badges for the law-abiding, “on the nexus of Wodehousian characters and children.” the Chaps attacked the “Wodehouse Criminals and On this topic one’s recollections are drawn to some their Crimes” quiz. It was fiendishly tough. We hapless writer or other who asked: “Are there no workhouses? victims of the Ruefs had to figure out who, or is that Are there no prisons?” whom, in the master’s works committed which, or is that what, crime. Attempts to steal the answer sheet Capital F.O.R.M. failed, and all we could do was persevere, The winning (Friends Of Ralston McTodd—Ottawa and vicinity) team of John Graham, Susan Cohen, Hal Lynch, and Contact: Megan Carton Maurine Dooley received prizes of chocolate doubloons wrapped in gold, which were eaten at once, proving that the Empress of Blandings is not the only pig in the Phone: Wodehouse world. Our next meeting will be September Email: 24, when the Ruefs, now drunk with success, will bring a pig catapult game to the meeting. How the restaurant Chapter One will react to pigs flying through the air when we aren’t (Greater Philadelphia area) even allowed to throw bread is more than I can fathom. Contact: Susan Cohen I am happy to report that Chapter One member Herb Moskovitz recently visited Gussie, our adopted newt at the Philadelphia Zoo, and Gussie is doing Phone: extremely well. The sign on the side of the newt tank Fax: saying “This exhibit sponsored by the P. G. Wodehouse Email: Society” is still there after 10 long years.

hapter One meets on a Sunday afternoon once every The Chicago Accident Syndicate Ctwo months except in the summer. Place: The Dark (Chicago and thereabouts) Horse Pub, Headhouse Square, Philadelphia. Time: Contact: Daniel & Tina Garrison 1:00 p.m. New members and visiting Wodehousians are always welcome. At our May 21 meeting the news went round the room that loyal TWS and Chapter Phone: One member Debbie Bellew (she who won a major Email: 20 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 ur chapter holds bimonthly meetings with a would sooth our jangling nerves. Thank goodness the Owide range of activities. Sometimes members of Chocolate Bar was open. Various yummies strengthened the Syndicate meet in each other’s homes to enjoy a us and gave us the will to carry on. At our July book potluck supper and read Wodehouse. Sometimes we meeting, Toni presented an abbreviated version of meet in an Irish pub where there’s good browsing Elliott Milstein’s talk on Ukridge, which Elliott gave at and sluicing. We enjoy theater outings followed by the Philadelphia convention. The book of the month dinner at a restaurant, and every time City Lit does was , with Cathy Smith giving a delightful a Wodehouse production, we are in the audience. We talk on the subject. At a later meeting we had dinner go to the Chicago Botanical Gardens to stroll through at Mingalones, then went to see Black Comedy by Peter the English garden there, while reading excerpts from Shaffer. Dessert at Raindrop Chocolate rounded out Wodehouse. We play miniature golf together and have the evening. We planned to discuss Cocktail Time one grand croquet game every year. at our August book meeting, ready to have our top hats knocked off by wise guys with Brazil nuts and slingshots. It is the favorite of all who like ghosting The Clients of Adrian Mulliner books for others, allowing them to become rich. (For enthusiasts of both PGW and Sherlock Holmes) On September 30 at 7:00 p.m. we will eat at Prima Contact: Marilyn MacGregor Pasta on Kirby. The big news is that we are about to resurrect our newsletter DroneStar. It will be written and edited by Rebecca Joiner and Bill Mitchell. If you Phone: would like to receive DroneStar, let Toni know. The cost is $15 a year, and that includes membership in the enior Bloodstains are held at Wodehouse Society Drone Rangers. Sconventions. Junior Bloodstains are held every January, part of the big annual Sherlock Holmes celebration in New York. The meetings are always great The Flying Pigs fun. One does not have to be a Client to attend; anyone (Cincinnati area and elsewhere) interested in both Holmes and Wodehouse is welcome. Contact: Susan Brokaw Our next gathering will be next January; till then, we hibernate. Phone: Email:

The Drone Rangers (Houston and vicinity) The Mottled Oyster Club / Jellied Eels Contact: Toni Rudersdorf (San Antonio and South Texas) Phone: Contact: James P. Robinson III Email:

e meet every month, alternating the meetings Phone: Wso that one month we dine out together and Email: the next month we hold a book meeting. At the book meetings, which take place at Barnes & Noble on he San Antonio chapter of TWS continues to meet Westheimer at Voss, we have two reports. One is about Tmonthly on the second Thursday of each month the book of the evening, the other is about “something (except when we don’t). We have a split personality: Wodehouse.” We browse and sluice at dinner meetings March, May, July, September, and November find the and share views. In June we met at the Raven Grill Jellied Eels assembling at a local eatery-slash-watering for dinner. It’s a particularly pleasant restaurant for hole, which we work mightily to tie in with PGW or Wodehousians because the owners are Wodehouse fans his works in sometimes very obscure ways, while in and allow the Drone Rangers to have separate checks, April and every other month thereafter we gather as even on Saturday nights. the Mottled Oyster at Barnes and Noble. We have lots We went to the Alley Theater to see Witness for the of lighthearted fun together and would love to add to Prosecution. The play was so chilling only chocolate our roster. Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 21 The New England Wodehouse Thingummy Society fan for good reason—and so were his sisters and his (NEWTS – Boston and elsewhere in New England) cousins and his aunts! We look forward to mustering Contact: Anne Cotton, president our numbers for the traditional Birthday Toast to the Master on, as will not be surprising, October15.

Phone: The Pale Parabolites Email: (Toronto and vicinity) Contact: Peter M. Nixon he NEWTS had a lovely gathering on August 3 Email: Tat the home of the Ravi family in Bedford, Mass. We began with a rehearsal of our skit for the next TWS he Toronto chapter will hold a social gathering this convention in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2007; Tfall when it will collectively gather around the TV casting is now just about final. We then had the briefest to watch old Bertie and Jeeves videos. The group did business meeting in the annals of the chapter, followed not meet over the summer because life was extremely by our usual intensive feasting and drinking. We are hectic in the Nixon household, thanks to the birth of planning a bash on October 21 to be held at the Publick Charles (Charlie) Peter Nixon on June 16. He weighed House in Sturbridge. Not only is the Old Sturbridge in at 6 lbs, 14 oz. The baby is thriving. His father is Village open (it’s a living, working museum of life thriving. His mother Libby is thriving. Peter can’t and culture in the early 19th century), but there will wait to read Charlie Wodehouse sleepy-time stories. be a Harvest Festival that weekend, with a scarecrow [Congratulations from TWS to Peter, Libby, and future contest’s exhibits on the lawn of the inn where we’ll PGW fan Charlie!] meet and lunch. We may (or may not) hold another rehearsal; we may (or may not) read a Wodehouse story; we will for sure chat our heads off and dine very well. The Pelikan Club Needless to say, all prayers for good weather that day (Kansas City and vicinity) are welcome. Our traditional Christmas bash will be Contact: Sallie Hobbs held at the Swansons’ clubhouse, as usual, on Saturday, December 9. We’ll have our traditional gift exchange, feasting, and revelry of one sort or another. Email:

The Northwodes The Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture Corporation (St. Paul, Minneapolis, and vicinity) (Los Angeles and vicinity) Contact: Kristine Fowler Contact: Melissa D. Aaron Phone: Email: Phone: Email: e meet the second Sunday of every month at W12:30 at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado, e spent the hottest afternoon of the summer in Pasadena. The readings change every month and can be Wa cool suburban villa (Comrade Sveum’s, to be found by checking our calendar or subscribing to our exact) plotting various plots, of which the world will be mailing list; we promise that it’s very low traffic. NB to hearing in due course. One project has moved to the Plummies in Southern California, whether domiciled implementation stage: We are turning out our pockets or just passing through—come up and see us. We also to help the Hennepin County Library acquire more occasionally attend events of interest, such as the Avalon Wodehouse books. HCL is the third library system Ball on Catalina Island; an Art Deco dance in the we’ve targeted in our annual campaign to spread the fabulous Casino; and the Lanterman House Tea, a good word. ragtime-era event. We go to ukulele festivals, silent On the purely frivolous side, a small subset of movies, etc. Subscribers to our email list can be kept Northwodes attended a charming production of HMS abreast of such local amusements. Information about Pinafore at the Theatre in the Round on August 11; our mailing list and important links can be found at we knew that Wodehouse was a Gilbert & Sullivan our website: www.lahacal.org/wodehouse. 22 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 The Pickering Motor Company aka Mary Kent, visits school librarians to talk them (Detroit and vicinity) into letting her give presentations on the Master’s great Contact: Elliott Milstein works to their students, and she occasionally tackles other projects to spread the word about Wodehouse.

Phone: Email: Class Warfare BY DAN COHEN The Portland Wodehouse Society (Portland, Oregon, and vicinity) ecently it seems there have been some attempts Contact: Ray Steen R to redefine or modernize the roles of Bertie and Jeeves. The conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote about how middle-class Email: and upper-class values had changed. An increasingly large percentage of the middle class, Brooks writes, are ttention, Portland, Oregon, Wodehouse fans! “living off home-equity loans and disability payments.” A Carol James and Ray Steen are forming a new They don’t do any work, and don’t feel one bit guilty TWS chapter. The first meeting of the new chapter about it. The superrich, on the other hand are now will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, October 1, at Annie gripped by “the grinding work ethic of the immigrant.” Bloom’s Books, 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland. To Their lives are “marked by sleep deprivation and put it another way: Annie Bloom’s is in Multnomah conference calls.” Village, which is at the intersection of SW Capitol Says Brooks, “If P. G. Wodehouse were writing Hwy and SW Multnomah Blvd. The bookstore has today, Bertie Wooster would be at Goldman Sachs generously offered the use of this room to TWS on a and Jeeves would be judging a meth mouth contest at regular basis. Portland formerly had a chapter called Sturgis.” The Wuckoos of the Palace. All ex-members of this In the Atlantic Monthly, Sheelah Kolhatker describes ex-group are invited to join the new chapter, as are all the growth of schools devoted to training professionals other TWS members who live in the area. For now the to serve the super rich. One of the graduates of these new chapter is calling itself The Portland Wodehouse schools, a retired air force lieutenant colonel, has just Society, a good, plain, rugged name that says it all. been hired by a billionaire businessman at a salary of Carol and Ray urge everybody to troll through recent $125,000 a year. His role, the author says, “goes far Chapter Corner write-ups in search of good ideas and beyond that of the classic butler or personal assistant— interesting activities. picture Jeeves crossed with the C.E.O. of a Fortune 500 company. It usually involves overseeing multiple The Size 14 Hat Club residences.” (Halifax, Nova Scotia) Personally I prefer the world that Wodehouse created Contact: Jill Robinson for us. Why don’t we just leave it alone? Email: Murphy on the Horizon The Soup & Fish Club he offices of the well-known publisher Popgood (Northern Virginia area) T& Groolley (yes, that’s the spelling) informs us Contact: Deborah Dillard that Norman Murphy is now putting the finishing touches on his ultimate Wodehouse book, the product of some 25 years of research and writing. An extension Phone: of In Search of Blandings, it will be published in two Email: volumes and should, he hopes, be out before the end of the year—hinting at the possibility of Wodehousian he noble aim of the Soup and Fish Club is to bring Christmas gifts. Full details will be published in the Tthe joy of Wodehouse to the younger generation. December Plum Lines. For advance information, write The chapter’s head and sole member, Deborah Dillard, to Elin Woodger Murphy. Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006 23 Hands Across the Sea Website address: www.wodehouse.org Website Development & Maintenance: he multitalented Hal Cazalet continues to do his Shamim Mohamed, AKA Pongo Tgreat-grandfather proud. In May Hal appeared with other singers in “Hands Across the Sea” at Merkin Where to submit articles: Concert Hall in New York City. This concert featured My First Time and Rivals of Wodehouse: Dan Cohen songs of the 1920s and 30s from musicals mounted by Chapters Corner : Susan Cohen (same address as Dan) Kern, Gershwin, and others in London, and by Coward All other submissions: Gary Hall and Novello in New York. A post-concert review noted: “As the great grandson of P. G. Wodehouse, Hal Cazalet provided divine interpretations of the lyrics of that celebrated wit. A highlight was his solo work on ‘There Isn’t One Girl’ (Sitting Pretty, 1924), a Wodehouse/Jerome Kern number where a man fears he will never find a woman willing to marry him. (‘For all the punch that Mr. Mendelssohn has / He might as well have written nothing but jazz.’)”

Contents 1 Aunts Aren’t What? Volunteer Officers 2 Tour of Wodehouse’s England President of The Wodehouse Society: 3 Providence Convention 2007! Jean Tillson 3 Convention 2009 Bids 3 Notice for Visitors to Dulwich College 4 Plum in Hollywood: Just the FAQs, and a Few Membership Secretary (new members, info changes): Myths Shattered Amy Plofker 6 PGW on Campus 7 Important Book News! http://www.wodehouse.org/inquiry/ 8 The Autograph Edition Told Again 9 Wodehouse Influences inThe Drowsy Chaperone Treasurer (dues payments): 10 A Hoax? Kris Fowler 12 My Intro to P. G. Wodehouse 13 Letter from England 14 Rivals of P. G. Wodehouse: H. Allen Smith Editor Emeritus: Ed Ratcliffe 15 A New Way to Pay Your Dues 15 Benjamin Disraeli, Richard Wagner, and PGW Executive Editor: Elin Woodger 16 What’s Going On Out There? 16 Wikiing the Time Away 16 Wodehouse Wiki Editor in Chief: 17 Capital! Capital! Poetry Dan Cohen 17 Googling Wodehouse’s Earth 17 In Defense of Jonathan Ames Layout and Article Contributions 18 Crimewave! Gary Hall and Linda Adam-Hall 19 Chapters Corner 23 Class Warfare Final Proofreading & Technical Assistance, Printer/ 23 Murphy on the Horizon Mailer Liaison, Rosters, Dues Sheets: Neil Midkiff 24 Hands Across the Sea

All quotations from P. G. Wodehouse are reprinted by permission of the Copyright Owner, the Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate. 24 Plum Lines Vol. 27 No. 3 Autumn 2006